Psych-Out

What is life? An illusion,
a shadow, a fiction
For all of life is a dream
And dreams? dreams are dreams
(Calderón de la Barca)

“Food, like eroticism, starts with the eyes…” writes Isabel Allende. Before that first morsel hits our taste buds, they’re primed by what we see. (Doesn’t your mouth start to pucker when staring at the photograph above?) In turn, what we see sets up a cascade of thought, belief, and memory. Our cognition frames our sensations. We taste not only that little morsel rolling across our tongue, but everything we’ve come to expect from that first bite. As the great chef Auguste Escoffier said, “Even horsemeat can be delicious when one is in the right circumstances to appreciate it.”

Fredéréc Brochet of the University of Bordeaux took two middling Bordeaux wines and served it to over 50 wine experts in two different bottles. One bottle was labeled Grand Cru — one of the highest levels of wine classification. The other bottle was labeled as an ordinary table wine. Although the wines were the exact same, 40 of the experts rated the wine designated Grand Cru as highly favorable, calling it “agreeable, woody, complex, balanced and rounded.” The other? “Weak, short, flat, faulty.” Only 12 of the experts said the wine designated as an ordinary table wine was worth drinking at all.

Studies of this kind are numerous. A little sprig of parsley added to a food company’s logo (Hormel Foods), the shape of a bottle (Christian Brothers Brandy), adding yellow die to change a margarine from white to yellow and adding a crown to it’s logo (Imperial Margarine), have all been shown to have powerful effects on how those tastes hit our taste buds. When Seven-up added 15% yellow to the green on its can (without changing the flavor a drop), there was a public uproar that the company added more lemon to their favorite drink!

In a recent study published in The Journal of the American Medical Association subjects were told they would be testing out a brand new pain killer. They were first given a small electric shock, and then given a placebo pill that they were told would ease the discomfort. Half were told the little sugar pill cost $2.50 a pill, the other half that the same pill cost 10¢. 85% of the $2.50 group said the pill reduced the pain, while only 61% of the 10¢ group said so. (Of course, the fact that so many found relief in the first place is startling in and of itself!) In essence, not only do we come to value more those things we perceive to be more expensive, we actually experience them as better.

Our entire library of memories, beliefs, expectations, and desires guide how and what our senses pick up from the world. Is it that our senses are fooled, or are they actually shaped by what our experience brings? To most, a seared steak seems juicier and more flavorful, even though the searing actually dries out the meat. What we in fact are experiencing is the saliva from our own mouths triggered in expectation of that juicy piece of meat hitting our tongues!

Our brain has been wired by the forces of natural selection to believe and trust its own impressions, often even in spite of information to the contrary. Biases feel like facts, expectations are indistinguishable from sensations. For better and for worse, we are wired to experience what we expect, and then believe it without question. The philosopher Donald Davidson wrote, “Without our subjectivity we could never decipher our sensations, and without our sensations we would have nothing about which to be subjective.”

In the simpler, yet more dangerous, black and white world of our evolutionary ancestors, the strategy of “trust your senses” worked good enough to get us through. The shadow side is that what we sense, and often act upon, far too easily fall prey to illusions set in play, and often outside of our conscious awareness, by our very own hopes, fears, wants, and expectations. (Watch subliminal advertisement demonstration by mentalist and magician Derren Brown below!)

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Suggested readings

Ackerman, Diane. A Natural History of the Senses. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.

Allende, Isabel. Aphrodite: a Memoir of the Senses. New York: HarperCollins, 1998. (A beautiful book on food and eroticism, with great recipes to enliven the senses!)

Gladwell, Malcom. Blink. New York: Little Brown and Company, 2005.

Lehrer, Jonah. Proust Was a Neuroscientist. New York: Houghton Miffin, 2007 (Section on August Escoffier).

When was the last time you felt that zing in your step? Sitting in front of a TV devouring a bag of chips? Or, when challenging your strength, endurance, eye-hand coordination, or capacity to build or create. It’s in our wiring to run, to lift, to hike, to climb, and work with our hands. Motion thrills us. We can become drenched in a glow of pleasure and satisfaction when we solve complex problems with our bodies.

From our earliest beginnings, we have scavenged, foraged, hunted, and migrated. We’ve populated every climate and terrain — a feat no other species can claim. For tens of thousands of years we beat unfathomable odds — defeating ice, torential rains, droughts, predators, mountain ranges, and raging waterways. How? By flaking stones, hollowing tree trunks, throwing spears, cutting branches, gathering fruits, mending hides, tying knots, and building fires.

We were groomed by natural selection and the forces of nature not only to survive, but to thrive in lands of scarcity, unpredictability, and danger. 2 million years of it. We’ve populated lands as varied as the savanna’s of Africa, the deserts of Arabia, the rain forests of Indochina, the frozen arctic ice scapes of Siberia and Alaska, the vast open plains of the Americas.

Today, however, we can spend months with our only physical challenge being a couple dozen daily walks to and from our refrigerators, cars, and computer screens. We can migrate from Detroit to Hong Kong in a comfortable 72 degrees, never to sweat, freeze, or feel a single raindrop moisten our skin. No one wants to turn back the time and return to the hardship and strife of our ancestors. Yet, has something been lost to us living in a world so stripped of physical challenge?

Neuroscientist Kelly Lambert has theorized that what we’ve gained in convenience we may have lost in activities that boost psychological resilience. Our brain’s reward circuitry exhibits far more activity when we expend effort to obtain a reward, than when there’s no expenditure of effort at all. Both physical and mental effort strengthens our brain’s reward-pleasure circuitry. Although we crave leisure, we are truly happier when engaging complex challenges.

Our brain’s pleasure/reward circuitry is dependent upon a neurotransmitter called dopamine and its corresponding dopamine receptors. When we exert ourselves in anticipation of that sought-after reward, happy dopamine pours into the system. This neuro-activity is what brings about that feeling of self-satisfaction. When we live a life that requires less and less physical effort, our dopaminergic system shrinks. Our reward circuitry fires less often and with less zing, perhaps making us more prone to depression, anxiety, and day-to-day numbness

You want to give your life a boost? Seek out activities that challenge and engage both your mind and body. Rock climb. Canoe. Garden. Take up pottery, tennis, woodworking, or slight-of-hand magic. Buy a motorcycle and let the wind blow across your face. Baby, we were born to run.

Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run

A lion smells a zebra. A songbird hears a sweet-to-his-ears response in some distant tree. You eye your neighbor’s new car. It’s that moment before the chase when the brain’s pleasure centers become awash in it’s favorite neurotransmitter – dopamine.

Our greatest pleasure seems to come in that moment before chasing that meal, mate, or brand new car. That’s when the burst of our natural pleasure chemical peaks. The reward itself? From the standpoint of dopamine, it’s little more than an afterthought.

Capture is sweet. Anticipation is sweeter, still. It’s a time-honored evolutionary strategy wired deep inside our nervous systems. When our pleasures were scarce, and the dangers were many, it was a strategy that helped us do the things we needed to do to survive. The state of anticipation revs up that much needed internal imperative to seek, to chase, to get up and make it happen – lions, tigers, and bears be damned! It’s what we call motivation.

The psychological term for this moment is the “appetitive stage.” It’s the time when expectation is tweaked and our appetite is whetted. When that burst of dopamine is released, pleasure surges so we actually get up and do the work to obtain what it is we need. The big cat perks its ears, lifts its nose to the wind. He’s gearing up to make his move.

Anticipation starts in our senses. A sight. A sound. A smell. It gets its boost at the cingulate gyrus. This ridge of cerebral cortex receives information from the eyes, ears, and nose. It then sends a message to the basal ganglia, which guides movement, and to the brainstem that stimulates our states of arousal. For we humans, this neuro-electro-chemical chain reaction can also start from a mere thought, fantasy, or idea. If the information is the right kind, we get an urge.

The nucleus accumbens is a closely connected brain area critical to our experience of pleasure and reward. It’s proximity to the brain’s motor system (the striatum) and the limbic system make it a critical intersect between emotion and action. We feel want. We anticipate reward. Pleasure starts to surge. Weight is given to whatever object we’re geared to seek, and thence it tugs and pulls at our attention. This nifty little system determines what’s worth pursuing. It’s a system that keeps us seeking. Keeps us working for that reward. (1)

You want to really light up pleasure’s Christmas tree? Add uncertainty to whether or not you’ll snag that zebra, mate, or brand new car. It’s why intermittent reinforcement is the most powerful of motivators. Will I get it, or will I not? Does he love me, or does he not? If you think you have a good chance, but you’re not sure, anticipation tops out in an exquisite burst of pleasure. Odds are it will be hard to stop yourself from doing something to get that answer, or seek that reward.

Beware that tweak of disappointment after the reward is seized. It may not be because the object desired is less desirable, but the contrasting withdrawal of dopamine between anticipation and capture. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.

Carly Simon, Anticipation

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(1) There’s increasing evidence that many addicts, especially cocaine addicts, develop a deficit in their pleasure-reward system. Some drugs wreak havoc on the dopamine receptors in the nucleaus accumbens. Often, such addicts experience low levels of motivation and very little of the internal reward buzz that keeps most of us engaged in those smaller, yet necessary, life moments.

“Dear Ms. Calle, I have recently been released from a long term relationship… I would like to spend the remainder of my mourning grieving in your bed…”(1)

Upon receiving this request, artist Sophie Calle packed up her bed and shipped it across the Atlantic with a note wishing the then stranger, Josh Greene, a quick recovery.

How do we mend a broken heart?  (See my previous blog.) Heartbreak has forever defied the counsel of philosophers and physicians.  (2)  Virgil wrote, “It is an easy passage down to hell. But to come back, once there, you cannot well.” Homer’s warrior Euryalus bid “I can as soon leave love, as the Sun leave his course.” The agony can be excruciating. It can lead us to contemplate jumping from the highest of bridges(3) or, at other times, seeking comfort in the bed of a stranger.

Are we left to wandering Eternity in everlasting sorrow?

“The crutch of Time can do more than the steely club of Hercules,” wrote Balthasar Gracian, the 17th c. Jesuit scholar.(4) Robert Burton, in his 16th c. work, The Anatomy of Melancholy, suggested exercise, diet, keeping busy, traveling, and the counsel of good friends — no different from what any good therapist would recommend today. (He also suggested fasting, sweating, bathing, and avoiding wine. Not bad ideas in themselves.)

These remedies aren’t a cure. They may only distract and soothe enough to help father Time work his magic. What if Romeo or Juliet had taken a few trips abroad, watched their diets, and took up jogging?

The best advice I read came from “Faith H” in response to a blog from a heart broken woman. “Spoil yourself, indulge, grab at all the good small things that come your way. Get away, somewhere different, preferably with a good friend who will listen to whatever mind numbing drivel you want to talk about HIM or whatever. Someone who will eat popcorn and drink bad wine and watch a few silly movies with you… Start making new memories. It never goes away completely but plans, girl, make big plans.” Robert Burton be proud.

As for Sophie Calle? After being dumped herself, and by e-mail no less, she distributed the text to 107 women professionals, photographed them reading it, and invited them to analyze the break-up e-mail according to their job. The ex’s grammar was torn apart by a copy editor, his lines used as target practice by a markswoman, second-guessed by a chess player, analyzed by a psychiatrist, and performed by an actress. “After a month I felt better…The project replaced the man.” She entitled the piece, Take Care of Yourself.

sophie

Another piece, Exquisite Pain, came at the end of another love affair. “Upon returning to France, I chose to recount my suffering rather than my trip.” She told everyone she met her story and then asked them to tell her their own stories of some event worthy of their suffering. Sophie wrote out their stories with accompanying photographs. In three months, she proclaimed herself cured due to the endless recounting of her story alongside its relativity to the excruciating suffering that others told to her.(5)

As for Sophie Calle’s bed? After several months, Josh Greene sent it back, his mourning over.(6) Perhaps the best way to ease that broken heart?

Turn it into art. Sophie’s counsel? “The worse the heartbreak, the better the art.”

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1) Calle, Sophie. Sophie Calle: M’as-Tu Vue. New York: Prestel, 2003.
2) Thomas Sydenham wrote in 1680: “Among the remedies which it has pleased Almighty God to give to man to relieve his sufferings, none is so universal and so efficacious as opium.” It seems that Sydenham may have been right. If interested see Lewis, Thomas, M.D., Amini, Fari, M.D.; Lannon, Richard, M.D. A General Theory of Love. New York: Vintage, 2001. pgs.94-96
3) There have been over 1200 suicides off the Golden Gate Bridge since it opened in 1937.
4) See Gracian, Baltasar. The Art of Worldly Wisdom. Trans. Christopher Maurer. New York: Doubleday, 1992. If you have the budget for only one self-help book to carry for you the rest of your life, this gem is the one!
5) She exhibited the piece almost 20 years later at the Pompidou Centre exhibition in 2003. See Guardian article.
6) Calle, Sophie. Sophie Calle: M’as-Tu Vue. New York: Prestel, 2003. The rest of the letter finishes: “Your bed has offered me comfort in so many ways, it will be difficult to replace Thank you again for your compassion. Warmest regards, Josh.”